Star Trek - The Future Begins (At the expense of everything you love)

Star Trek

The future if Apple begins creating iStarships

Year: 2009
Director: J.J. Abrams

Overall Rating: 2 stars

J.J. does it again!  Everybody knows that flashy is better so this movie must be one of the best of all time.  There is enough white, glass, and lens flare in this reboot (Read: we're completely out of ideas, so let's just change the entire back-story) of the franchise to make you want to gouge your eyes out.

In an effort to boldly go where every recent trek series has gone before this piece of cinematic creativity begins with the lamest shortcut in Trek lore:  Time Travel.  Not even a full minute into the film the big bad comes in from the distant future to annoy classic Trekers everywhere.


The film then jumps forward 25 years or so so we can meet all the Trek characters we know and love, most of which are still in the academy.  We finally get to see Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru (One of the only attempts to stick to canon) and various other little tidbits including the nauseating romance between Spock and a human (Minimizing spoilers here, I'm well aware of who she was :) )  After the needless romantic sub-plot, proof that the young Kirk is an arrogant prick, and showing us just how much Kirk and Spock hate each other, they all climb on board the Enterprise to go help Vulcan.

It's at this point that you realize that Star Trek has seriously jumped the shark.  Everything you know is wrong and it will never be the same again.

The rest of the plot is pretty standard Star Trek. (once you get past the 'reboot' aspect)
Big Bad moves on to target #2
Scotty does something that's never been done before
Enterprise catches Big Bad
Kirk and Big Bad fight, Kirk wins
Kirk gets huge promotion even though he's a criminal.

Unfortunately, the plot wasn't the only problem.  :(  Apparently Mr. Abrams and his staff have absolutely no originality between them and starship interiors are no exception.  From the generic Romulan interior to the Apple store inspired bridge of the enterprise, there's nothing you haven't seen before.  J.J.'s favorite effect, the lens flare, is used to the point of being distracting.  His signature fast-cuts and shakey-cam scenes are also here, but not nearly as badly as in some of his other works. (I'm talking to you, Cloverfield!  Your time is coming!)

The acting however wasn't all that bad.  Of course, all the cast had to do was watch a couple episodes of ToS and mimic the performance of real actors, so I'm not sure.  It is kind of fun to watch a bunch of kids try to imitate these performers from 50 years ago, but without a plot, there's really no reason to care anymore.

The overall experience is just good enough to gain it a 2 star rating.  It will stay on the media machine for a bit, but I don't really expect it to be watched again. (Unless we get the rifftrax for it, of course)